


Mirror

by Tmae



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:59:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7820584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tmae/pseuds/Tmae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were a lot of things that they didn't have in the future, and mirrors were one of them. It was something that might be taken for granted in the past, but seeing yourself was a feeling he found almost unmatchable.</p>
<p>(Originally written in April, 2013. Just now crossposted)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Oh wow, this one. THIS ONE. This is one of the ones that I'm still happy with even today. There are a few places I might want to tweak it but I'm actually still happy with how this one is.  
> It was originally for a YJ Anon Meme prompt.

Slowly, carefully, he reached out a hand and pressed it to the cool surface. He didn’t speak a word, kept his breathing as quiet as he could, as though the slightest wrong movement or sound might shatter it.

He knew what mirrors _were_ of course; not knowing something like that for coming to the past would be ridiculous. He knew what he looked like too, people had told him; he was Caucasian, with brown hair and green eyes. Those were simple facts that he’d been told, and accepted to be true.

But this? This was something different _entirely._

With equal speed and carefulness to placing his hand on the mirror, he pulled it away.

The boy in the mirror looked back at him; messy brown hair, and two clear, green eyes looking back at him.

He raised a hand, and the boy did the same. He dropped it, and the boy moved in equal time.

He felt something bubbling up inside of him; laughter and happiness and all those positive things that had been brutally snatched away in the future, almost lost to him forever.

Almost, but not entirely.

You weren’t encouraged to think of yourself as a person in the future, to have a sense of self.

But here, standing right in front of him, was complete and utter _proof_ that he was a _person._

It was a simple thing to the people of this era, to know what you looked like, but to him it was something that caused joy immeasurable.

Here, in front of him, was the boy that everyone saw, the boy he’d never had a chance to see himself as. There were those eyes that his Dad had said were so much like his mother’s, there was that hair that his Aunt Dawn often joked was untameable; right in front of him stood the boy that everyone knew as Bart Allen.

Laughter bubbled up his throat and out, not loud, not full of life like everyone else’s, just a small, quiet shaking of his body and a barely audible giggle, a grin that almost measured up to the one Impulse wore on a daily basis stretched across his face, tears of pure, unadulterated _joy_ started welling up in his eyes.

_This_ was what he looked like.

_This_ was _him._

The words bounced around his head, echoing over and over and over.

This is me.

_This is me._

**_This is me._ **

A knock on the bathroom door pulled him from his reverie.

“Bart, honey? Are you almost done in there?” came Joan’s voice.

Eyes still locked on the face in the mirror, not wanting to be pulled from the depths of his own green eyes, he answered.  
“Yeah, I’ll...I’ll be out in a minute,” he called. His hesitation was miniscule, just a fraction of a second, something that would be caught only by a speedster.

“Okay, dinner’s almost on the table,” she replied, and then footsteps walking away.

Reluctantly, he pulled away from the mirror slightly. He took another look at the smiling face in the mirror, and watched as the smile slowly faded only to be replaced by an even bigger one that wasn’t quite as genuine.

“Totally crash,” he breathed, before turning for the door. He unlocked it, opened it, but just before stepping out he glanced back at the sheet of polished metal and glass and let the facade slip.

_This is me._


End file.
